More trend watching- Title IX & H.S. Wrestling

Unfortunately, swimming is not alone in showing troubling trends of decline- the sport of wrestling also suffered a drop in participation rates at the high school level.

Fans of wrestling know very well how their sport has been devastated at the collegiate level because of gender quotas. Across the country, wrestling supporters led by alumni groups have fought valiantly to save teams from termination, and often, even when they raise enough donations to fund their programs, Title IX’s gender quota shuts them down.

Now it appears that the wrestling community also needs to seriously focus on the impact of gender quotas on their high school teams. At the national level, high school wrestling declined from a total number of participants in the 2014/15 season of 269,704 down to 264,149 in the 2015/16 season. This represents a nationwide decline of 5,555 wrestlers or 2% from last year.

In California, where Title IX compliance pressure from the Ollier v. Sweetwater Union H.S. (see 10/2/14 posting at SavingSports) ruling will impact school administrators the most, we seeing a shocking decline in participation rates for wrestling of 12.8% in the last two years.

(Data source: National Federation of High School Associations- www.nfhs.org)